Eating my own dog food
(Or why it's important to get the context right)
Bit of a different type of post today, folks.
You see, I recently realised I hadn’t been eating my own dog food.
Not literally, of course. I’m not a monster.
What I mean is I was giving it all that about how you need to have a narrative, need to fight against something.
But I wasn’t really doing that myself.
This dawned on me when I was speaking to a fellow agency owner about his plans to rebrand/reposition slightly. At one point I said to him:
“The key thing is to figure out where in the conversation your prospects are, and then meet them there.”
And after the call I kept thinking about that. And I realised that I wasn’t following my own advice.
I was pitching “Narrative Design”.
The trouble was nobody really knew what that was, what it entailed, or why they needed it. So selling it was an uphill battle. I had to educate the market on what it was, not just why I should be the one to help them.
So I put on my narrative cap (not a thing yet but if holla if you want some cool merch) and got thinking.
And after chatting to various people and running a poll on LinkedIn (you know, the scientific approach) I landed on the term of… wait for it…
Narrative Positioning.
I know, it sounds pretty much the same as Narrative Design, but let me break down why it works better.
Positioning is already known by my target clients. So it gives them the context behind my service. It’s their entry point. It’s meeting them where they are.
Narrative is my twist on it. It’s what sets me apart from other positioning consultants.
So yeah, this felt much better.
But I still needed a narrative.
So I began to think about the opposites of Narrative Positioning. And realised that most positioning advice out there is about niching. Niche down. Focus on a specific market segment. Blah blah blah.
But in my opinion that’s just not enough these days. Because markets are so crowded that even if you niche down you’ll have competitors. So you need to go further.
And for me that’s where Narrative Positioning comes in.
I even made a pretty diagram to show the differences:
Then all I needed to do was write out my own narrative and use it on my website.
Which you can check out here. Would love to know your thoughts.
What’s the lesson here?
I always aim to share something that’s at least slightly useful to you, and I realise this post has been a bit self-indulgent. But there is a useful takeaway.
When it comes to crafting your own narrative, it’s really important to get the context right. And you do that by figuring out how aware your buyers are of your chosen product category.
If you’re selling something like a CRM, then chances are your audience is already pretty aware of what a CRM is.
If, however, you decided to market that as a “Relationship Development Platform” then people would be confused. The context of CRM is actually really important.
The biggest misstep I see with this kind of thing is when founders and marketers think that they can create their own category of product.
In some cases, this is necessary. If you’ve genuinely created a type of product that hasn’t previously existed, then you might not have a choice. But honestly? Those situations are extremely rare.
Much more likely is the idea that you’ve created a product that sits in an existing category but adds a twist on it. In the same way my service exists in the “positioning” category, but adds the twist of “narrative”.
Think of it like a supermarket. Where your product sits is really important. If you’ve made a new type of soft drink, you want it to be placed next to the other soft drinks. If it’s placed with the cleaning products then people will just be confused.
So when you choose your category, your best bet is to pick an existing category, and then add your unique take on it.
Something else
I want to start sharing some other cool stuff I come across from time to time, related to SaaS, positioning, marketing, or just something completely random.
Today’s cool thing is another newsletter that I wholeheartedly recommend…
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